Floyd Little speaks to the crowd as he is honored in a Hall of Fame ring ceremony at halftime of the Denver Broncos' game against the Indianapolis Colts during an NFL football game in Denver on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010. Colts won 27-13. (AP Photo/Barry Gutierrez)

Gale Sayers, football player for the Chicago Bears, 1970. (AP Photo)

Barry Sanders retired from football at age 31 after 10 frustrating seasons with the Detroit Lions. He had 15,269 career yards when he walked away from the game. (File photo)

Little can identify the bricks of burden Peterson carries for the Vikings, a rebuilding team with a stagnating quarterback leading a phantom passing attack, one in danger of missing the playoffs for the third straight year and fourth time in his six seasons in Minnesota.

“The Franchise,” as Little was known in Denver, is a five-time Pro Bowler who flourished with the downtrodden Broncos from 1967-75. He recognizes a franchise squandering the prime years of a generational superstar like Peterson who returned stronger, hungrier and more productive from a career-threatening knee surgery to stalk 2,000 yards, an MVP long shot whose against-the-odds comeback is among the NFL’s best stories of 2012.

“I know how that is. I played with 27 different quarterbacks and 50 offensive linemen in nine seasons. I can appreciate the Adrian Petersons of the world,” Little said last week.

“To still be doing what he is doing, knowing defenses are targeting you and gearing up to stop you every Sunday, I don’t know if people really appreciate what kind of runner he is. There’s not another back I know of who is carrying that much responsibility and acquiring the kind of yards he is. It’s phenomenal.”

If Peterson averages 138.5 yards over Minnesota’s final four games, he will become the seventh player in league history to eclipse 2,000 in a season and the first since Tennessee’s Chris Johnson in 2009. Peterson has averaged 158 yards in the past six games, putting him on pace for 2,077, which would be second-most behind Eric Dickerson’s 2,105 in 1984.

Peterson craves the milestone, setting the bar even higher for himself — 2,500 yards. But he also is hunting bigger game.

“I want to win a couple championships. However long it takes, I’m going to ride until the wheels fall off,” he said.

Peterson is piloting the Vikings (6-6) as they toggle between rebuilding and contending. Their postseason fate hinges on whether they can defeat the Chicago Bears on Sunday, Dec. 9, at the Metrodome.

Christian Ponder, their second-year quarterback and 2011 first-round draft pick, is teetering on the edge of the developmental cliff, his public approval rating circling the toilet.

Final judgment on the Ponder investment could go either way for coach Leslie Frazier and general manager Rick Spielman, who assembled a team that doubled last season’s win total only to regress at the worst time of year.

Here stands No. 28 having already accomplished more than anyone not named Adrian Peterson expected this season and doing everything he can just to keep the house of cards from collapsing.

“The only guy I can relate to him was Barry Sanders,” Little said.

That might be the best compliment a running back can bestow upon another.

Or the greatest curse.

Sanders, the one-time Detroit Lions highlight machine, rushed for 2,053 yards in 1997 and was closing in on Walter Payton’s all-time rushing record when he unceremoniously walked away in July 1999, stunning teammates and the Motor City with a final juke that opened wounds that took years to heal.

In a revealing NFL Network documentary broadcast last week, Sanders explained how the Lions’ lack of playoff success and perpetual rebuilding cycle soured his desire to continue playing. He retired at age 31 after 10 seasons. His 15,269 yards were 1,457 shy of Payton’s record, which Emmitt Smith surpassed in 2002.

Common themes are developing between Sanders and Peterson, unique runners who commanded full attention from defenses keyed to stop their mostly one-dimensional offenses.

The Lions churned through quarterbacks Rodney Peete, Erik Kramer and Scott Mitchell unable to assemble a consistent or reliable passing game to complement Sanders.

Sanders defeated the Dallas Cowboys in his first playoff game following the 1991 season, to advance to the NFC championship game. But the Lions lost five consecutive postseason games during his tenure and have not won a playoff game since.

“Had things been different with the team, I don’t know if I would have made the same decision,” Sanders said in “A Football Life.”

His Lions registered a .488 winning percentage during his 1989-98 tenure.

“Had we been coming off a Super Bowl victory or a deep run into the playoffs, I don’t know. I just felt like I had run out of steam. At that 10th year I just felt that was my time, that was it. I had had enough. I played the game long enough, and that real drive and determination and enjoyment of the game had left.”

Smith, who won three Super Bowls with Dallas, told the filmmakers a decade’s worth of disappointment wore on Sanders.

“You play this game to win Super Bowls. And once you’ve had a taste of the playoffs and you feel like the organization is not moving in that direction and you are the guy and you’re risking your neck, your body, your mind. And you feel like they’re not putting out the same kind of effort. And you’re losing? It’s not fun,” Smith said.

“And once you start picking at a guy’s love for the game, you lost him.”

The Vikings churned through Tarvaris Jackson, Gus Frerotte and Brett Favre before stacking their chips on Ponder to be the long-term solution at quarterback.

Peterson defeated the Cowboys in the 2009 divisional playoffs, advancing to the NFC championship game on the wings of Favre’s career season. His playoff record is 1-2 while the Vikings are 45-47 (.489) during his five-plus seasons.

Asked whether he was concerned his increased production has not paid off with postseason success, Peterson hedged his answer.

“Ah, not really. I will (be) though,” said Peterson, 27.

He has four games to reach 2,000 yards against teams whose defenses average a top-10 ranking, including the No. 2-rated Houston Texans. If Peterson accomplishes the feat, history favors the Vikings extending their season.

Four of the six running backs who eclipsed 2,000 yards reached the playoffs. Only Buffalo’s O.J. Simpson in 1973 and Chris Johnson of the 2009 Tennessee Titans stayed home.

However, none of those ball-carriers averaged more yards per rush than their quarterback did per passing attempt.

Only Bills quarterback Joe Ferguson averaged fewer yards per attempt (5.7) than his running back did on the ground. Simpson, like Peterson, averaged 6 yards per carry.

Still, Peterson remains bullish on the Vikings’ chances to field a contender and play for a Super Bowl title, something that has eluded the franchise since 1977. And there is no doubting his confidence in Ponder.

After last week’s loss to the Packers at Lambeau Field, Peterson made a beeline in the locker room to buttonhole his crestfallen quarterback, who had thrown two costly red-zone interceptions, and offer encouraging words in full view of the media.

“I feel like (it) can happen here. I feel like we have the talent to make it happen,” Peterson said. “We’ve just got to get the pieces and put them all together.”

And so he waits as his playoff-victory-to-rushing-yards ratio (1:8,198) widens.

No player has gained more yards with less playoff success than Sanders. Simpson, 18th all time with 11,236 yards, lost his only postseason game for the Bills in 1974.

At least they had the chance.

Gale Sayers played five spectacular seasons (and two injury-riddled afterthoughts) for the Chicago Bears from 1965-71 but never reached the playoffs.

The Broncos posted losing records in seven of Little’s nine seasons and never advanced before he retired 37 years ago as the seventh-ranked rusher of all time.

“How do you reconcile that with being in the Hall of Fame? You don’t,” Little said. “I was the franchise for all those years, and it was a struggle because everybody knows if they stop you they can win the game.

“It was a culmination of a complete body of work. I played hard every down and enjoyed the game, and I proved that you can’t define somebody by their height (5 feet 10) and weight (196 pounds) and tell them you can’t play. I walked away after nine seasons as the last running back in my draft class, having finished what I set out to accomplish.”

Peterson is a bygone power back running against the prevailing winds in the era of the elite passer. But football historian Joe Horrigan says throw out the conventional analytics for him.

“None of this should be surprising. The guy is a force of nature,” said Horrigan, vice president of communications at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “But I come back to that feeling that the game is built for passing, so it’s going to be interesting to watch him progress. Right now, at this moment, he is on a path where we’re going to be hearing even more about him the next two or three years.”

All of which comes back to whether the Vikings ultimately will leverage the finest running back in team history into a championship or waste a supremely talented franchise player achieving greatness while they fiddle.

“It’s kind of getting to be a regular thing that we expect him to have these 60-, 80-yard runs for touchdowns. We’re almost taking it for granted,” Ponder said. “But I think 10 years down the road we’ll look back and really think about what he did, or after the season think about what he did. It is really tremendous and amazing what he’s doing. He is a one-of-a-kind player.”

Brian Murphy has been on the Pioneer Press sports staff since 2000, migrating from the Detroit Free Press, where he covered police, courts and sports for four years. Murphy was the Minnesota Wild/NHL beat writer from 2002 to 2008 and has covered the Vikings as a reporter and columnist since 2009. Murphy is a Detroit native and Wayne State University graduate.

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